Second time’s the charm? Somalia’s new president

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Hello and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist. In New York, I'm Jon Fassman. Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. All over the world, people are adapting to a changing climate. They're sowing different crops, planting more trees, and painting roofs white instead of black. But more important than any of those may be making sure children go to school. And for 2 years, people have been reluctant to spend hours in crowded rooms inhaling and exhaling with strangers. But this summer, Tom Cruise has returned to the skies, and dinosaurs once again roam the Earth. The summer blockbuster is back. But first— Today, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud was inaugurated as president of Somalia, 10 years after he first entered the presidential palace. This makes him the first president to hold the office twice since Somalia became independent in 1960. But while Mr. Mohamed has broken new political ground, his country faces many of the same challenges it did when he first took office. The threat of widespread famine, vast swaths of territory held by jihadists, and much like in 2012, terror attacks are routine.

So I went to Somalia just a few days after the election, and to be honest, To get to Mogadishu is always rather complicated.

Tom Gardner is The Economist's Horn of Africa correspondent.

You arrive at the airport, and basically all the international organizations, businesses, are in the green zone which surrounds the airport. And this is basically a fortified mini city within a city, checkered by roadblocks, Ugandan soldiers everywhere who provide the kind of African Union security. And to leave it, requires an enormous armed escort. So for me, just to journey a few hundred meters down the road outside of the airport zone required being accompanied by 7 soldiers in a jeep and a mounted machine gun going through multiple checkpoints. The atmosphere along the road as I exited the airport was I would say quiet, very little street life. Tense, to be honest. And then I arrived at what appears from the outside to be a military barracks. Again, multiple soldiers milling around. And then I had to pass through multiple perimeters, essentially, until eventually reaching the heart of this hotel compound. Where inside I found the newly elected president of Somalia, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud.

So tell me about him. Tell me about the man himself. What was your impression of him?

Well, he's an academic. He's a civil rights campaigner. He spent his entire life pretty much living in Somalia, even after the state collapsed in the 1990s. He's avuncular. He's soft-spoken, mild-mannered. And seems very conciliatory as a person. But he's tough as well. He has to be. I mean, 4 days before his last inauguration back in 2012, he survived an assassination attempt. In fact, he's survived multiple assassination attempts in the last 10 years. This time around, he has so far been lucky enough to avoid anything like that. But the country he's taking over is still a very dangerous place.

So tell us about that. What kind of country is he taking over?

He's taking over a country which is more divided, more insecure, and more isolated diplomatically than it was when he took power in 2012, and indeed when he left power and handed over to his successor in 2017, because since then the country has slid backwards. The outgoing Somali president, Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, better known as Farmajo, was a populist basically. I mean, he sidelined powerful regional leaders, He lashed out at critics. He packed his cronies into the federal security forces. And he also upset foreign allies too. He drew close to Qatar and Turkey at the expense of other influential Gulf states, the United Arab Emirates in particular. And he picked fights with neighboring Kenya and Djibouti. Hassan Sheikh Mohammed told me he had run for office again in order to calm the hostile atmosphere in Somalia.

First of all, everybody who is here in Somalia, whether he's the president or whether he is an ordinary citizen, he's living in a risk zone, a risk environment. This time around, I'm seeing an opportunity, and that I can put stronger foundations for the state-building of Somalia. I'm not claiming that I will leave Somalia like Denmark and Finland, but I'm going to leave Somalia much better. Than as I came to it.

Things really came to a head last year when Farmajo's attempt to stay in office by delaying elections threatened a return to full-scale civil war.

So you've described an exceptionally fractious country, it sounds like. Do you feel that President Mohamed is in a position to heal those divisions?

It will be difficult. I mean, whoever has run Somalia, a labyrinth of clan loyalties typically undermine national unity. But he does come to power on the back of considerable goodwill. Many Somalis have welcomed his return as the man to fix the mess. And he's moved fast, I'd say, to mend bridges with opponents. One of the first things he did actually after winning the election was to invite all of Somalia's regional leaders to a meal together. He then promised he would share power and complete a new federal constitution. Abroad too, he's making some friendly advances. He told me about his international diplomacy and foreign leaders have rushed to support the new man. America in particular is sending hundreds of troops back into Somalia to help the government fight a jihadist organization called al-Shabaab, which is affiliated with al-Qaeda.

And at one point, al-Shabaab controlled wide swaths of territory. How much of a threat does it now pose today?

So in Hassan Sheikh's first term, the jihadists were knocked back, and he told me about how his administration had liberated many towns during his time in power. But since then, he says it's spread again across the country.

Years, we lost most of those districts that we liberated in 2012, 2016. All these districts has been taken back by al-Shabaab, many of them.

It controls much of the countryside, and it's claimed to have infiltrated state institutions in recent years, in particular the security apparatus. In the places they control, al-Shabaab also runs courts, it provides basic goods and services. They're more entrenched now than they ever were.

Al-Shabaab was not collecting revenue. Now they are collecting revenue. Some estimates say they collect more revenue than the government itself. They are everywhere now, in the institutions, in the port, in the customs. So They are now establishing a kind of deep state within our state and within the country.

Because of the compromising of the security apparatus, few places are safe.

We just heard President Mohamed say that he liberated districts during his first term. What is his plan to deal with al-Shabaab this time?

Hassan Sheikh is a moderate Islamist with links to the Muslim Brotherhood, so I think that helps explain the stress he put on winning the ideological battle, waging a kind of multi-front war, as he put it, to take the Islamic narrative back from al-Shabaab. But I think a lasting solution will probably require talks with al-Shabaab as well. And that means first pushing them back, building a favorable military position to negotiate from. The last big offensive against al-Shabaab was in 2019. Hassan Sheikh says he will launch another, and then once he's really push them back deep into the countryside, theoretically talks could begin. I think in practice that could take years.

So jihadism as embodied by al-Shabaab, that's probably the most well-known threat facing Somalia. But what else is President Mohamed gonna have to contend with?

I think the biggest issue facing Somalia right now is the drought which is afflicting the Horn of Africa as a whole. This is one of the worst droughts in decades, and the UN predicts things are going to get even worse. It's predicting that more than 7 million people are going to be affected by the end of the year, and that perhaps up to 400,000 will die before the end of this month. Hassan Sheikh told me he was appointing a new special envoy to deal with the drought. He has done so since. He's spoken with the World Bank, the United States, the UN, everyone in an effort to deal with this. But one of the problems, in fact, of al-Shabaab controlling so much territory is that access to much of the population is very difficult for these aid agencies, which makes dealing with this even harder.

So it sounds like he's facing a battle on many fronts. Do you think he's up to the job?

I think most Somalis would say his first term in office was very much a mixed bag. I mean, corruption in particular was rampant. His cabinet was fractious and unstable. He went through multiple prime ministers. But this time he does come armed with experience. He says he's better equipped to deal with graft this time round, and he has a reservoir of goodwill. I think he will need both to bring unity and peace to Somalia.

All right, Tom, thanks so much for your time today.

Thanks very much, John.

Investing with Schwab is like spending a Saturday at a great farmers market. You can fill your reusable tote with a bit of everything. Maybe you go for some free-range self-directed investing. Or perhaps you pick up a few farm-fresh trades while you peruse. You can even get help from a dedicated advisor. That's full-service wealth management. Mix, match, and change your mind whenever you want. Because at Schwab, you can invest your way. No matter your goals or appetite for investing, Schwab has everything you need, all in one place. Visit schwab.com to learn more.

As temperatures rise around the world, growing seasons are starting earlier, rains are coming later, if at all, and crops are being scorched.

Record-breaking heat waves in northwest India and Pakistan.

Out-of-control bushfires are continuing to burn in Western Australia.

More than 180 people have been killed in devastating flooding and landslides in Nepal and India.

Some of the world's poorest countries, with the least amount of money available for adaptation and mitigation, may suffer the worst impacts. But there is an overlooked tool that could help people adapt better to the changes.

Education gives people the mental equipment to adapt to climate change.

Robert Guest is The Economist's foreign editor.

Education makes people more able to change the way that they do things, to get hold of new information, to process it, and then to turn it into practice.

So this means that people who are better educated are actually better able to cope with the effects of things like droughts and floods?

Yeah, people who have almost no education find it much harder to accept the idea that they might have to change the way that they do things in order to survive under totally new circumstances. And that's the challenge that climate change poses to a lot of people.

And Robert, one reason we're talking about this is you've recently been to Kenya.

Yeah, I went to Kenya to see what all this looks like in practice. So I spoke to Shedrack Lolokuru, who comes from a family who own cows in the north of the country. It's much harder for them to cope with the terrible drought that's hitting the north and indeed other parts of the country without some degree of basic education.

Most of our communities are not educated, so they have no idea about what climate change is and why things don't happen the way they've been happening.

So Shadrack is educated and he and his two brothers own about 100 cows and they have a dispute about what to do. There's not enough water because of the drought. So Shadrack, who's reasonably educated, says, okay, we've got to sell half of our cows. So that the 50 cows we've got, there'll be enough water for them and they'll survive and be healthy.

We could sell part of our cows and put money in the bank and wait to buy more cows when the drought has gone.

And with the 50 cows we sell, we'll have money and we can put it in the bank and we'll keep it. But his older brother, who is completely uneducated, never been to school, he's older, so, you know, there just wasn't schooling around. He says, no, I can't sell any cows. Because if I have fewer cows, I'll be less of a man. People will respect me less.

It has been not easy for my brother to accept that because he knows what defines the status of a man is the more cows you have, the more respect you have, the more admirable you are.

He also doesn't understand that climate change is real, that the rains are not coming back, whereas Shadrack, who reads the news, he listens to the radio, he understands that climate change is real and that they have to adapt.

It has been so difficult to convince my brother, but I think we are now trying to make him understand more.

The herd's come down from about 140 to 100 in recent years, and it's a very difficult process of negotiation, but they're getting there. In other families in the same area where they don't have any educated people at all, You're finding that people are refusing to sell their cows and all their cows are just dying.

What else does education help with as far as climate change is concerned?

So there was a real-world study in India that showed that in areas where people were affected by floods, if the mother was educated, she was much more likely to be able to keep her children healthy after that. And it showed that mothers who were educated but in poor households were just as good at keeping their children well nourished as mothers who were uneducated but in well-off households. So it's not just that educated people are more likely to be rich, it was that education itself was essential in helping people cope with floods.

And I imagine education would be especially important in poorer countries, poorer places where climate change is probably going to have the greatest impacts.

One of the problems you have with climate change is that the parts of the world that are most vulnerable to climate change also tend to have really terrible schooling systems. And there's a big thing about very uneducated people in very poor places tend to be very conservative and risk-averse. And that's completely rational. If you're a subsistence farmer and you try something new, a new way of planting your crops, and it goes wrong, it can be fatal. And so there's a very understandable tendency just to do things the way your forefathers did. But when the circumstances change as dramatically as they are doing because of climate change, it doesn't work because you have to be able to adapt to new situations. And that's the great thing that education enables people to do. So it's not just about what you learn, it's about the ability to learn. So there's another family I met in Kenya who epitomized this difference, and that's the Mulwa family. In eastern Kenya.

My name is Philip Mulua, and I come from Mwingi, Migwane, in Kitui County.

In Philip's fields, the maize is taller than your head. It's very impressive. Next to it is his father's field, where it's below knee height.

We are looking at one maize which is full of fruit, and the other one which is very down, about 2 fit, and the same rain has been raining, and this guy is doing very well than the other one.

The difference here is education. Philip, who is better educated, has dug a retention ditch to conserve water. He and his wife buy fertilizer and new drought-resistant seeds rather than simply taking the seeds from the previous year's crops. They test the pH of the soil and they add lime if it's too acidic. They plant their seeds earlier than their neighbors do so they catch the first rain.

You have to be prepared as a farmer. When you are expecting the first rain, your seeds should be on the ground. When they grow the first two leaves, you weed.

They adopted all these techniques in the past 10 to 15 years, partly in a response to climate change.

And then you will have fruits after 3 months, sure bet.

These new techniques work well, as Philip's burgeoning crop demonstrates. He offered to teach them to his father, but he's not interested and uses none of them.

When you don't follow the simple rules, it's not the best thing to do. You have to change with time.

And so Robert, do you think that Philip and Shadrack are more keen to learn new techniques because they're more educated, or because they learned specifically about climate change at school?

It's principally just because they're going to school. I mean, there are places where people are taught about climate change at school, but mostly it's learning how to read, learning how to process new information. Just being able to read helps you find things out. One farmer in Nepal told us proudly that he'd done at least 100 courses in agricultural training on the internet, and it had taught him new ways to shore up his rice paddies, to save water, to hold back floods, which alas have gotten much more common in Nepal. And to diversify into more valuable cash crops like bell peppers. Meanwhile, his elderly illiterate neighbor is struggling to produce rice in the same way that she used to.

And so when people think about climate change adaptation, what usually comes to mind are things like seawalls and green roofs. But from what you've just told us, it sounds like we should consider making education better around the world an essential part of adaptation strategy?

Absolutely. I mean, there's a place for big engineering projects in helping people adapt to climate change, but they tend to be designed to address one specific problem that may or may not happen. The advantage of education is it's much more flexible. It prepares people for almost any plausible scenario. And on the plus side, the overall state of education in the world has been getting significantly better over the last couple of decades. But COVID has really interrupted that. So before the pandemic, roughly 53% of 10-year-olds in low- and middle-income countries were unable to read a simple text. That figure, the World Bank estimates, has probably risen to about 70% because of learning loss in schools. That's a huge deficit. So it's tremendously important to get that back. If the world is changing, fast, people have to be able to change fast. And they're only really going to be able to do that if they've been to school.

Robert, thanks so much for joining us today.

Thank you, John.

The weather's getting warmer and the days are getting longer, which means it's that time of the year again. Time to sit in an air-conditioned cinema to watch huge explosions And people fighting dinosaurs.

Don't move.

Bigger.

Why do they always have to go bigger?

The latest installment in the Jurassic Park saga, Jurassic World Dominion, directed by Colin Trevorrow, is hitting cinemas this weekend, and Universal is hoping for a massive payday. And it appears this optimism isn't misplaced. Cinema owners have been seeing an upturn in trade.

So the worldwide box office had a terrible time in 2020. It fell by nearly three-quarters, and even in 2021, it only partly recovered.

Tom Wainwright is The Economist's tech and media editor.

We've just had the first really big hit movie of the summer, Top Gun: Maverick.

What the hell? Good morning, aviators. This is your captain speaking.

But Top Gun did very, very well. It took nearly $250 million on its opening weekend, which is the biggest ever opening for a film starring Tom Cruise.

So do those box office results for Top Gun signal broader hope for the film industry?

Well, maybe, yeah. I mean, certainly Paramount Pictures, which released this film directed by Joseph Kosinski, are hoping that this is a sign of more to come. We've had a few other hits during the pandemic era. Sony's Spider-Man: No Way Home, directed by Jon Watts, had a very big opening weekend. God, this is so cool. I always wanted brothers. So you, like, make your own web fluid in your body?

I'd rather not talk about this.

And Doctor Strange did pretty well. That's another Marvel film. Batman did okay. But Top Gun is the first non-superhero film that's been a hit. And that matters because the superhero films that we just mentioned tend to have young-ish audiences. And a worry that a lot of people had about the post-pandemic era was that older audiences in particular had kind of got out of the habit of going to the movies and that it was going to be very difficult to ever have a hit again that didn't involve a comic book character in some way. And Top Gun has helped to dispel some of those worries. I mean, more than half of the tickets sold so far to Top Gun have been to people aged over 35, which reassures people that those slightly older viewers are willing to go back to the theater now. So people are hoping that over the summer there are going to be more hits and that things are going to pick up again.

And what we've seen so far this summer, how does that compare with pre-pandemic box office?

Well, it's getting better, but it's not there yet by any means. I mean, forecasts for this year worldwide at the box office is probably going to be about three-quarters of its level in 2019, which obviously was the last normal year. So we're not there yet. And looking worldwide, China is still not over COVID by any means, and there are occasional lockdowns in cities there, meaning that Theaters there are closed. Russia is out of the picture at the moment because of the war in Ukraine. And perhaps most importantly, the studios have got into the habit of releasing more of their films straight to streaming, which is, I guess, a disincentive for people to go and see them at the cinema.

So how do studios feel about that? I mean, is there still optimism for the rest of the industry as the big summer blockbusters come out?

I think there's certainly more optimism than there was. I mean, it's been such a terrible couple of years that people are absolutely dying for anything that looks like good news. So I think people are feeling more cheerful. And we've got some quite big films coming out in the next few weeks. You know, Jurassic World Dominion from Universal is out this weekend. Then we've got Lightyear, which is the latest kind of Toy Story film from Disney. We're still not quite up to pre-pandemic levels of releases though. There's gonna be fewer films released this year than there were in the before times, 'cause I think studios are still a little reluctant to risk some of their bigger films in theaters. And of course, quite a long kind of production timeline. The films coming out now are based on decisions made many, many months ago. But I think the performance of Top Gun will make people think again. It's going to take hundreds of millions of dollars at the international box office, and studios, I think, will think twice before just foregoing that for a streaming-only release from now on.

But what about streaming? What are studios bringing out for the home viewer this summer?

Well, there's quite a lot going on there as well. The same day that Top Gun came out and did very well, Netflix released their latest season of Stranger Things, and that too did incredibly well. And over the summer, there are a couple of very high-profile examples. We've got the latest Game of Thrones saga from Warner Bros. Discovery coming out in August. And just after that, Amazon Prime Video is releasing a Lord of the Rings spinoff. Now, that is reckoned to be the most expensive piece of television ever made. And in fact, its budget for the whole season is about 3 times the budget, reportedly, of Top Gun. So there are big reasons for people to stay at home as well.

And Tom, let me end on a personal question. You're our media editor. What are you looking forward to seeing this summer?

Oh, I don't know. I mean, let's see. I've got 3 young dinosaur fans at home, so Jurassic Park is appealing.

It might be.

I'm not sure they're quite old enough for it yet, though, so we may have to stay home for that one. To be honest, I'm a Stranger Things fan, and I've been enjoying that. So for me, it really is a kind of battle between the box office and the sofa. In my case, I think the sofa is winning so far, but hopefully I'll get out soon to the theater. How about you?

The sofa wins in my house too, and so does Tolkien. I'm looking forward to seeing Lord of the Rings. But either way, thanks so much for stopping by, Tom.

Thanks a lot.

That's all for this episode of The Intelligence. If you like us, give us a rating on Apple Podcasts. And you can subscribe to The Economist at economist.com/intelligenceoffer. See you back here tomorrow.

Investing with Schwab is like spending a Saturday at a great farmers' market. You can fill your reusable tote with a bit of everything. Maybe you go for some free-range self-directed investing. Or perhaps you pick up a few farm-fresh trades while you peruse. You can even get help from a dedicated advisor. That's full-service wealth management. Mix, match, and change your mind whenever you want. Because at Schwab, you can invest your way. No matter your goals or appetite for investing, Schwab has everything you need, all in one place. Visit schwab.com to learn more.